Quinn leaned closer to the computer screen. There was something strange and familiar about the tree. Its top had a bulbous look, incongruent with the rest of its thin stature. It had the appearance of being broken halfway up and its base was so spindly it didn’t look strong enough to hold up the rest of its bulk. The camera dipped and came up again, a woman’s voice this time saying something that he couldn’t make out. The zoom engaged and the tree blurred before clearing once more, its features defining so that something within his mind forced his eyes to widen, his jaw falling open.
The tree moved.
It stepped to the side, its narrow trunk splitting in two as the camera tipped skyward. The woman squealed a warning. A thin, pale flash swung past the camera only feet outside the car’s window. The video blurred and filmed a split second of the car’s roof and the lower half of a man’s bearded face before ending and resetting to its beginning.
Quinn sat back from the computer. His finger hovered over the play button before punching it again. He watched in silence trying to make out the words that the couple said, but they were too indistinct, too garbled. But he could hear something else clearly enough in their voices, running like a frigid river below a layer of ice. Fear. They were both terrified. The tree enlarged on the screen, impossibly taking a step to the side as the shot turned up and caught the pale thing passing the car again. Quinn paused the video, staring at the image. The thin strip outside the vehicle was bent, its middle bulging slightly with a few small dents at its joint. The entire shape looked rounded, like a white stilt bending at its center.
Quinn examined the screen for several long minutes, something stirring in the back of his mind. His lips began to tingle and he blinked, his hand reaching for the computer to start the video again.
The screeching of brakes came from the direction of the highway followed by a bang that he felt reverberate through the desk. A clicking issued from somewhere in the house and the lights went out. The computer’s screen flipped to darkness, reflecting his face only inches from it along with the room behind him.
Quinn jerked, sitting back in the chair, his eyes flitting around the office. The power had gone out. The sound of the refrigerator motor winding down was the last noise and then supreme quiet invaded the house.
He stood, his legs wobbling and his stomach slewing as if it were overly full of a noxious soup. He moved down the hallway, pausing in the kitchen before continuing out the back door. The air was lighter outside, the smell of burning jet fuel no longer as pungent. Quinn breathed it in, trying to calm the nausea that rose and fell within him, a sickening tide. He looked toward the highway, listening for any further sounds but heard nothing. Only the wind spoke in the branches.
Fresh sea breeze coasted past him as he moved around to the rear of the house. He found the squat generator box and opened its access door. The generator was a large unit, capable of powering the entire house and attached garage. It was set up to turn on immediately following an outage, and it was only then he realized that it hadn’t kicked on when it should have.
He examined the controls and bundles of wires running into and out of the unit. One of the buttons in the center of the side panel was labeled ‘Auto Start’. He pressed it and pulled his hand away quickly. There was a sound from inside its steel shroud like dominoes snapping together. He waited for a moment and when nothing else happened, he pressed the button again. There was the same loud clicking and then silence.
Quinn stepped out of the enclosure and stared at the machine. Maybe it was out of gas? Foster had been meticulous about his work, always going the extra step to ensure that each job was done fully and correctly. But how long had it been since they’d had a power failure? A year? Two? The groundskeeper could’ve forgotten about the generator’s maintenance, or maybe he’d been in the midst of exchanging the fuel and gotten sidetracked on another project.